


heartaches by the number

by aspiringpencilcase



Category: Claymore
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fallout, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-03-22 02:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13754271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspiringpencilcase/pseuds/aspiringpencilcase
Summary: Irene, the doctor at the Followers outpost, lives with the guilt of letting her best friend Teresa die under her scalpel a few years ago. Clare, Teresa's younger sister, tries to convince Irene that it wasn't her fault with no avail. Features guilt, shame, guns and a lot of lesbien.





	1. like a halo in reverse

**Author's Note:**

> there's graphic depictions of blood, wounds and surgery in this chapter, please keep it in mind!

Despite everything, Clare keeps coming back. Irene can't wrap her mind around it, not that she tries very much: Teresa is still an open wound, despite eight years passed. 

She still remembers it, vividly so: the sun of Mojave, merciless above their hands; the scalpel in her steady hands; the bullets deep in Teresa’s flesh. Blood was everywhere, drying fast in the oppressively hot air and getting sticky. Clare’s wide, scared eyes: she refused to leave the tent during the (failed) surgery. Teresa’s endured it all stoically, like she always did: the curve of her ever-present smile twitched only so slightly, even though Irene was sure there wasn’t nearly enough of anesthesia. 

“Take care of Clare,” Teresa wheezed out before dying from blood loss, her pulse jumping to erratic and fast parody of a rhythm, her heart trying its best to pump what blood there's left; then dropping to zero altogether. Irene never forgets the blood dripping from her gloves at the moment.

Irene is too much of a coward to fulfill Teresa’s will afterwards. Sure thing, she kept Clare safe until she was too restless to always follow Irene’s footsteps and requested to be let into the wasteland to wander; but they were never close like Clare and Teresa once were. Or Irene and Teresa, for that matter. Teresa-shaped void is always there between them, smiling sharply, an ugly caricature to the very concept of faintness, never letting Irene forget that it was her own incompetence that put the ghost there.

Irene left the NCR troops after the incident, Clare with her. She’s not a surgeon anymore: she treats light and medium wounds and works with radiation; too afraid to fuck up someone else’s life.

“You were the best damn surgeon in the NCR,” Clare tells her angrily again, just as she did a week, a month, a year ago. “It’s a waste of your talent.”

Clare tells her a lot of things, actually. About snails that have grown at least three sizes since she last saw them and now attempt to spit poison. About the groups of raiders she killed. About the loot she brought. Always in the same angrily indifferent voice: Clare tries so hard to be cold, but her flame never died, unlike Irene’s. 

Irene just shrugs. Her patient just left, leaving her a few caps as payment: had a sprain that was laughably easy to treat. If she were a bit more charitable, she would’ve do it for free, but the Followers need every cap they can get. They’re always low on resources, but they’re a neat bunch: Clare was the one who lead Irene here and her moral compass is rarely askew. 

She hears the voices of Helen and Deneve from outside the tent: those two are inseparable. There was some sappy story about how one of them saved another from existential crisis or shit like that: Irene thinks it’s too much of a fairytale to be true, but respects their right to brag about each other. Besides, they’re in Clare’s group of friends, so she is just a little bit fond of them by default.

Clare leaves after Helen calls her over in her usual loud and abrasive manner, after glaring at Irene one last time. The rustling of a tent is a comforting sound: it usually means that Irene is alone. Solitude puts her at a temporary ease; she also can maintain her arm prosthetic.

It’s a complicated system of artificial neurons and metal parts Irene knows jackshit about: usually it’s Deneve who works on them, her being an engineer and all, but today Irene is too cranky to require someone’s assistance. 

Her mood always plummets after Clare reminds her of supposed waste of her talent. Irene fiddles with her arm: it aches under stress and thinking about her past and her taste for surgery instead of treating chems addiction and giving out Rad-Aways isn’t her favourite topic. Well, it doesn’t ache per se: the pain is phantom in nature, but doesn’t feel any less real.

Irene flips her arm one last time and writes down “Machine oil” in her shopping list: it gets terribly squeaky sometimes and messes with her sleep. Her handwriting is pristine: once a surgeon, always a surgeon, she very deliberately does not think. She also carefully doesn’t think about the nightmares and intrusive thoughts since they can’t be treated with machine oil, and which cannot be treated needs to be pushed away until it either perishes or heals itself.

Next up is supplies check: she needs some broc flowers for Steampacks. Also a few syringes.

After a familiar routine of gathering caps, reloading her hunting rifle and putting on a light grey cloak to protect her fair freckled skin from the scorching heat, she exits the tent, and after averting her eyes from quietly laughing Clare, the fort.

She lights a cigarette after exciting the fort: having a few of her very own tobacco plants in addition to cigarettes Clare finds when looting sure is beneficial. Irene sells some on the side to save some caps, but addiction wins out. 

Leaving Freeside behind and nodding to a Kings member near the gate, she turns on the radio on her Pip-boy: she and Clare have one for the two of them, taking turns wearing it when they explore the wasteland. Teresa found it when they were both just common soldiers at NCR troops and they used it together when the need arose. 

There’s some song about heartache on; it’s sappy but soothing, so Irene leaves it on. Not her style, but the next hour will be occupied by gathering the flowers and trying not to get her arms full of cactus needles, so it will do.

***

A few hours, fucking cactus needles and hagglers asking for five caps a syringe and, apparently, for a few rounds from her rifle later, Irene is back at the Followers’ outpost. The first thing she sees is Clare, who is cleaning her pistols. She hums an old lullaby she learnt from Irene herself: she used to sing it to young Clare, when she was too scared to fall asleep. Irene, in turn, heard it from her mother a long time ago, back when they lived at Goodsprings. 

“Howdy.” 

Clare waves at her, not tearing her eyes from her pistols.

“Leave me the Pip-boy, okay? I wanna go explore a bit today.”

“Explore” in Clare’s language means “kill a few raiders, steal their belongings and come back smelling of blood so Irene could curse in my general direction while bandaging my legs”. Irene doesn’t terribly mind, because Clare is a grown girl and doesn’t need her encouragement. Or discouragement. Or her, period. 

Irene unstaples the Pip-boy from her wrist and puts it on the repairing table. Clare nods.

“Thanks.”

It’s relatively quiet, the stillness of the air interrupted only by the chatter of the people outside the tent and Clare’s song. Irene doesn’t even notice the slight tapping of her own foot in rhythm with the melody.

Then the tent rustles all of a sudden, and there’s unfamiliar woman stumbling inside. The first thing Irene notices is the fair pink of the scar in the place of her left eye, contrasting with her dark skin. Her arm and shoulder are bleeding profusely, Irene can see the white of her bone; she is in a need of at least a few stitches, flashes in Irene’s mind instantly.

Once a surgeon, always a surgeon, huh.

“Which one of you is the doctor?” 

Irene clears her throat.

“Me, but I don’t work with such bad wounds. Sorry, but you’ll have to go elsewhere.”

Clare nearly knocks over her chair as she stands on her feet, pistols in hand. Irene is almost afraid she’ll shoot her; the treacherous voice in her mind tells her that it’s the damn time.

The blood keeps dripping onto the sand, the woman’s eyes jumping from Irene to Clare and back in a clear attempt to understand the state of affairs.

“You’re a surgeon! How long will you keep moping?” Clare’s voice is shaking; the cold anger seeping out through the cracks of her speech. 

She turns to the newcomer, who, to Irene’s surprise, didn’t even twitch. 

“She will treat you, don’t worry.”

Irene raises her eyebrows, her arms still.

“So I could kill her? Like I did with Teresa? Once wasn’t enough for you, or-”

“You didn’t kill anybody! How many times do I have to tell you?” Clare’s voice is even lower than it was a minute ago; Irene has never seen her so angry. Her face is white as a sheet, her jaw clenched: Irene isn’t sure she could open it with a pair of tongs.

Clare storms out, the tent’s improvised door flapping after her, like a swan’s wing. Irene feels her back clench, straight as an arrow. 

“Sorry for interruption. I’ll be going now.”

The words are rough; it’s clear that the woman will faint from the pain soon. It’s surprising that she managed to last this long already; but Irene’s next sentence shocks her even more.

“Sit here.”

Irene feels the world around her sharpening; she’s got an objective. There’s a box with all of her instruments she keeps clean and neatly kept for fuck knows what reason. She thought of selling it so many times she’s lost count; but never had the heart to go through with it.

Her movements are steady and sure. 

“I don’t have any anesthesia.”

“Scotch will do.” The woman almost moans: she doesn’t have long if Irene won’t concentrate.

Irene nods, and gives her a bottle of vodka. The swiftness with which the liquid disappears in the stranger’s mouth is something else, Irene thinks while putting on her gloves.

She cleans the wound, careful and fast, and makes a quick work of deleting dead and infected tissue. She didn’t expect to be so proficient at this after so many years of rotting her skill away, but she is.

The next part is trickier: she has a few radiated needles (a good thing they’re all a few steps from being ghouls in any case) and silk thread. It’s not ideal, but it’s all she has: Irene hopes her patient won’t have an allergic reaction. Irene pulls out her holder and forceps; here goes nothing.

She guides the thread through the skin; the years of experience come back as if she was practicing every day since Teresa’s death. Of course, she’s rusty, but not so much as she expected.

The woman moans softly: Irene thinks that she must’ve endured a lot of pain in her time, if she knows how to tolerate someone sewing her without aid of anesthesia. Her eye is cloudy from the alcohol; but her gaze is steady.

Irene finishes, leaving a few millimeters of skin for the pus to leave the wound and bandages the stranger’s arm. The white of the bandage contrasts neatly with the woman’s dark skin.

“Now you need rest. Take this: these are antibiotics to prevent the infection. Try to sleep, if you can.” 

The stranger’s eye follows her disinfecting her instruments and putting them away. Irene hears her wheezing sighs, getting quieter and slower.

She leaves the tent. 

Clare is smoking outside, which she rarely ever does. Irene exhales, long and shaky: the novelty of the situation only now catches up with her. She haven’t sewn a single wound for eight years; yet she felt as if it was the only thing she occupied herself with for all her life.

She meets Clare’s eyes and almost chokes at the sheer victory in her eyes. Thankfully, she collects herself before she expresses any sort of emotion and turns away.

Clare hums.

“I don’t treat such bad wounds, huh.”

Irene goes outside the fort to smoke.

***

The stranger needs to stay for a bit for Irene to keep watch on her wound. She manages to fall asleep after all, her breath ragged yet unhurried. Her wound is swollen but that’s to be expected; Irene muses, looking at the shape of the stranger sprawled out on the rusty bunk bed.

The woman opens her eye and looks at her. She moves her dry, chapped lips; Irene gives her a glass of water and an antibiotic. Soon she’s out cold yet again.

A few days pass like that. Clare gives the woman some porridge with what edible plants she could find in the desert, so she won’t end up malnutritioned, and makes sure she drinks a lot. Antibiotics and rest work their magic: the swelling goes way down and the woman spends more and more time awake. Irene doesn’t pay her much attention besides changing her bandages and checking the skin restoration progress. Sometimes she’s thankful for the radiation: from what she knows, such wounds would’ve taken way more time to heal than they do now.

“Thank you.” 

These are the first words Irene hears from her newfound patient since the surgery.

“It’s my job. It'll be two hundred caps.”

To Irene's surprise, the woman doesn't even blink. She gathers the needed amount from the sash on her belt and puts it on the table.

“You made it sound like you weren't a surgeon, yet you're pretty damn good with a needle. I'll be back if I'm ever in trouble. What's your name?”

The stranger's speech is curt and business-like. Irene likes that, just like she likes everything impersonal.

“Irene. Yours?”

“Rafaela. Afternoon.”

With those two short words and something resembling a wave, Rafaela disappears from the tent. 

Irene rises to her feet to put her pay in the common caps stash. The sun is still cruelly hot in the sky, even despite the relatively late hour. Irene shields her eyes with her prosthetic and lights a cigarette.

The smoke weaves into the simmering air of the wasteland.


	2. the warm glow that lingers on

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's a small one, but here it is regardless. jean's pov

Jean’s day so far is not going as planned. In fact, it’s going as far from planned as the head of her commanding officer is shoved inside his ass.

Her orders were to eliminate the group of Legion soldiers settled near Vault 34. Fuck knows how they went so far into NCR territory, almost coming near the Strip, without getting killed, but here they are. Her CO explicitly has told her not to return without them dead; he has either severely underestimated the Legion group, overestimated Jean, or, the most likely option, was just extremely tired of her being too smart, and sent her to her death.

Jean is fed up with staying in NCR military, if she were to be honest. She enlisted when she had nowhere to put herself to, the simple farming life of Goodsprings boring her to hell and back, but all she received instead of a purpose were spineless, uncaring commanders, routine assignments and, when she climbed up the chain of command, equally bored and incompetent subordinates. 

She looks over the Legion group through the scope of her rifle: back to the present. Mulling over the life she might be stripped of any second now will surely do her no good.

There are at least ten of them, and they have a pet radscorpion, which Jean wouldn’t have thought possible, but here they are. It’s simply impossible to do alone, she thinks, as she takes out the two of them with her silenced rifle, but damn her if she doesn’t at least try.

Bingo. While the rest grips their swords and reloads the guns, trying to find the one responsible, Jean manages to find a crate just a bit closer and crouch behind it.

The problem is that even after a flag grenade, which cripples the legs of three soldiers, there are still five left; they now know where she hides, so there’s a solid chance of them surrounding her and either killing or enslaving her, Jean shudders at the mere thought; also there’s the fucking radscorpion. Great.

Jean reloads and manages to hit the shoulder of the decanus on the front; but she wanted to place a headshot, it’s pretty disappointing. She throws another grenade: two more are gravely wounded, two are dead. 

Three to go; she’s out of grenades and they managed to cripple her right wrist. It’s far from ideal: it’s her dominant hand. They’re getting closer: Jean tightens the grip of her left hand on her rifle: if she’s going down, they’re going with her.

She waits, and waits, and waits. 

What she gets instead of Legion soldiers is the sound of three gunshots, sharp and precise. 

Jean waits a few seconds more, and hears a clear, crystal voice.

“You can come out now. The scorpion is confused, I think.”

Jean stands up, holding the owner of the voice, a young woman of seemingly her age, at the gunpoint. She gets the same treatment: it’s a common thing to be wary of strangers in Mojave. Slowly they both lower their weapons. 

“Are you okay?” 

Jean squints at her crippled wrist. It will heal with time; not something to be overly concerned with. Besides, she has a Steampack to ease the pain and aid the regeneration.

“I would say so. How about you?”

The woman shrugs, which probably means more or less.

She tries to breathe deeper, slower; the bands around her lungs gradually loosen. The pinprick from the Steampack’s needle is almost unnoticeable, masked with the pain in her wrist and the intense glare of the short-haired woman in front of her. She doesn’t leave, just watches Jean fuss over her wounds, pistols in her hands and hair caressed by the wind.

This is how Jean remembers this moment: her strong figure, tall against the sun, her bright eyes. The posture of a true saviour.

“Thank you. I would like to repay for you saving my life. What’s your name?”

“Clare.” Her saviour says with raised eyebrows. “I usually don’t demand caps from the people I helped.”

The words come out with a questioning undertone. Jean shakes her head.

“I’m not talking about money. I want to ensure that once I can save your life too.”

The frosty breath of death just behind her shoulder, numbing her for the last few hours of her improvised stakeout, finally lets go. She breathes in the dry, hot air of Mojave; she exhales sheer gratitude.

Clare shrugs and turns to leave.

Jean reloads her gun and stands up to follow her. The bodies of the Legion soldiers will surely rot soon, she thinks absently, stepping over one of them. 

*** 

They walk along route 95, Jean falling a bit behind, watching Clare’s back. It’s relaxed and a bit slouched; the tips of her hair seem golden in the sunshine. Jean catches herself admiring the steady shape of her, muscular back, lean strong arms, long legs with defined calves.

“How long will you keep following me?”

Jean hums. 

“As long as I need to. I have a debt to pay.”

Clare sharply turns on her heel to face Jean. She tries to appear annoyed, and manages, her eyebrows furrowed and hands laying on her hips convey the message, but deep inside Jean sees confusion.

“Don’t you have anything better to do with your life than to give it to me?”

The words sting, but the fierce fire in Clare’s eyes doesn’t.

“This was my last mission with NCR. I’m a free woman now, so I want to fulfill my promise. Is it so wrong of me to want to help you?”

Clare opens her mouth to retort; then closes it.

“Whatever. You’re good in a fight, so you’ll be useful.”

Is she… embarrassed? Jean thinks, not quite believing it: Clare doesn’t seem the type to get flustered easily; but here she is, so tough and strong, not willing to meet Jean’s eye.

They continue walking until they are near the east gate to Freeside. 

“I’m with the Followers. If you have anything against them, you’ll have to go through me.” Clare says in a conversational tone, like she’s discussing her breakfast. 

Jean likes that. She already likes a lot of things about Clare, which is a novelty for her: she’s usually not such an easy person to hit it off with. 

“Even if I did, I owe you. But, as a matter of fact, I have nothing against them.”

“Good, we could use some fighters, if you up to join. Also, you’ve repeated the wort “indebted” and its synonyms at least a hundred times so far.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Jean retorts, watching Clare tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear. Her wrist is one big mess of a scar tissue, the uneven pigmentation spreading over the skin of her wristbone.

“I know.”

***

There’s two women sitting in the tent when Jean follows Clare into it. One, with long red hair and a prosthetic arm, stands near the workbench and mixes something in a syringe. Other sits near her on a bedroll and changes the bandage on her leg.

“This is Irene, my older sister,” Clare points to the red-headed woman.

Irene cringes: Jean wonders about what this is all about.

“I'm not her sister.”

Clare pays it no mind; she seems used to it.

“This is Rafaela, Irene's patient.”

Rafaela nods, not looking away from her legs.

“My name is Jean. Clare saved my life today, I will be with the Followers from now on.”

The atmosphere in the tent is so tense she could cut it with a knife. Irene obviously doesn't understand what is going on, but something tells Jean she is not going to ask. Rafaela straight up doesn't seem to care. What a strange bunch.

Rafaela reaches to the bottle of scotch and makes three huge gulps, her throat rippling with it like an ocean wave. Jean feels the shudder going through her at the mere sight; Rafaela seems to pay it no mind. Irene follows her motions with a impassionately disapproving gaze, but doesn't say a single word. 

Clare gestures to the tent’s exit. 

“Let's go meet Miria, if you're going to stay here. She's the head of the fighters group.”

She sounds a bit irritated, as if Jean's a bother and gets on her nerves just by being near her. It makes Jean uneasy, and more than she is willing to admit. 

In the short period they've known each other, she already craves Clare's approval. It's would be dangerous, if not for how kind Clare seems to be. For some reason, Jean can’t make herself to imagine the situation where Clare takes advantage of her: she’s with the Followers, for heaven’s sake. 

“Miria! We have a volunteer.”

Jean inhales: this seems exactly like the new life she’s been seeking ever since Goodsprings. It comes to her as the southern wind playing with Clare’s hair and the deep voice of her new commander.

“Hello, I’m Miria. Welcome to the Followers.”


End file.
